Five studies investigated how nursing staff attribute causality to aggressive behaviour. The research was informed by literature that suggests that (i) challenging behaviour can be maintained by the behaviour of care staff and (ii) the behaviour of care staff may be influenced by their explanations about challenging behaviour. Two separate literatures have examined this area; applied behaviour analysis and attribution theory.
The first study coded verbatim accounts of three groups of nurses about challenging behaviour. It investigated whether the causal attributions reflected the dominant understanding of challenging behaviour? The results suggested that the majority of staff attribute the cause of the behaviour to be independent of the environment and likely to be permanent. These attributions contradict the dominant scientific explanation of challenging behaviour.
Study's 2 and 3 investigated whether care staff possess a style in how they explain challenging behaviour. Study 2 measured how a group of staff explained the behaviour of two clients with the same topography. The results showed significant differences in the domains of internal/external and personal/universal attributions. Study 3 compared the explanations from study 2 with new explanations about the same behaviour presented as a video role-play.
The results showed that the care staff were able to use a variety of attributions to explain different examples of the same behavioural topography.
Previous research had proposed that the attributions of stability and control might influence the motivation to help others. Sharrock et al. (1993) proposed that both these attributions influence a sense of optimism, which in tum influences a desire to help a client in need. The purpose of the fourth study was to investigate the influence of stable and controllable attributions on the optimism of nai've carers about an imaginary client with challenging behaviour.
The results showed that stability had the stronger influence over optimism.
To test the practical implications of these results, the final study examined whether attributions would change as a consequence of intensive staff training ( designed to increase the effectiveness of a staff team). The results
showed that attributions of stability showed significant changes but the attributions of control remained the same.
The results demonstrate that contrary to a number of studies, care staff can be shown to be effective and helpful while continuing to attribute control to clients who display challenging behaviour. The results are discussed in relation
to (i) the validity of cognitive-emotional models used to explain the responses of care staff to clients with severe behavioural problems and (ii) the principles of rule-governed behaviour.